Ocean Marketing is the talk of the Internet at the moment, thanks to some really, really poor customer service techniques. The story was documented by WebProNews earlier today, and as the fallout continues from Ocean Marketing’s actions, the company is getting lampooned again and again on a number of sites.

You know a topic has hit the critical mass when its parodied on YouTube, much in the manner Ocean Marketing is in the following video (warning, NSFW language):

Now, if you missed the story, the video may not make as much sense as it would to those familiar with the meme, but rest assured, while it is in parody form, the video captures the mood — and Ocean Marketing’s actions — quite well. You can read about how the incident started over at Penny Arcade. An example of how the company in question corresponds to its customers, which led directly to the incredible amount of ridicule Ocean Marketing and/or Ocean Strategies is receiving (emphasis is ours):

LOL Thanks for the Free PR I know the Editor N Chief of Kotaku , IGN , Engadget I’ll be meeting them at CES .The noise complaint was for people high up on the food chain in a corporate world of real estate you have no clue about. Thanks for the Rice Rocket Compliment too love me some motorcycle . Send that over to Engadget you look like a complete moron swearing and sending your customer service complaints to a magazine as if they will post it or even pay attention do you think you’re the first or the last what are they going to do demand us to tell you were your shipment is or ask for a refund on your behalf … Really … Welcome to the Internet ? Son Im 38 I wwebsite as on the internet when you were a sperm in your daddys balls and before it was the internet, thanks for the welcome to message wurd up. Grow up you look like a complete child bro. I Don’t have my controller so im gonna cry to the world … Really ?? Hey take that free time and do something more productive. All you had to do was check the like everyone else , people have inquired but you’re the douchiest of them all…

One wonders if this is the same strategy WalMart used when they were taking over the department store world. I mean, did the now infamous Paul Christoforo actually think a customer this committed to tracking down a product they paid for would remain silent after such a response? If so, it’s amazing Ocean Marketing or whatever they’re called now succeeded enough to get one client, let alone one good enough to catapult them to Internet infamy.

The hangout consisted of a group of Google+ power users sitting in a room discussing the service. According to tech writer Mike Elgan, Horowitz “hinted that upcoming announcements about G+ user growth will shock everybody.”

GlobalWebIndex put out data last week indicating that Google+ hit 150 million active users. Some have shown some skepticism around the data. As my colleague Josh Wolford noted, several things have happened with Google+ that could explain the increase in users: YouTube got more integrated with Google+. Pages for brands and celebrities were launched. Google+ signups were built into Android Ice Cream Sandwich (which is on the Galaxy Nexus).

I can tell you from experience with large scale audiences (over @ MySpace) that it’s nowhere near that number in terms of “activity” defined by any normal definition of “active” (sometimes companies try to say an “active” user is one that logged in once within a month, sometimes once a day, etc). Whatever the actual number is, it doesn’t really matter because Google has a history of “winning” and here’s how they do it: speed, or, you might want to call it efficiency.

Elgan points to a new post from Paul Allen, who regularly puts out estimates about Google+ user growth. According to him, Google+ has passed 62 million users, and is adding 625,000 new users per day. He predicts 400 million users by the end of 2012.

That would be about half of what Facebook has at this point, which would be incredibly impressive for a year and a half of existence. That would indeed, be “shocking”.

He shares this growth chart:

The number of active users isn’t really the important thing. If they have Google+ accounts, that means they have Google accounts, and that’s really what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter if they’re sharing updates with Circles or “hanging out”. It means Google has them as user with a profile that they can push access to all of their other products to.

Do you know what confuses me? Advertising. I don’t understand why these little boxes with product names show up on web pages I visit. And I really don’t understand why people interrupt my TV shows with short videos about cars and food and cleaning products. What’s the point?

If only there was someone who could explain it all to me!

Oh, wait! Now there is! Facebook has a whole web page and video that explains advertising in a way that is simple enough for a three-year-old. The video is so juvenile, the only thing missing is Bert and Ernie.

“It takes a lot of money to hire the best engineers and build the technology needed to keep Facebook up and running. Last year it cost over a billion dollars. From the beginning, the people who built Facebook wanted it to be free for everyone, delivering ads is how Facebook can pay for this, so you don’t have to.”

So, let me get this straight. Websites cost money to run. If a lot of people use them, it costs even more money and so either the user has to pay (not gonna happen) or they run advertising in order to raise the money.

When you put it that way, it all makes sense!

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Yikes. Is there really a Facebook user on the planet who needs this lesson in economics? Do they think it will stop people from complaining about ads on their wall? As if folks are going to watch that video and come away feeling sympathetic for Facebook?

Season’s Greetings, fellow Mozzers! As if this month hasn’t been exciting enough with the release of Custom Reports and Branded Keywords, today we have a special surprise for you. You asked for it, and we are happy to deliver. Introducing Historical Link Analysis for PRO!

Being able to see your link metric data over time helps demonstrate the effectiveness of your link building strategies. And hey, who doesn’t like to see progress? Read on to see how this new feature works.

Subdomain Link Metrics

This update to the Links section is full of lots of little goodies. Not only are we now storing your campaign link metrics over time, but we have also added Subdomain Link Analysis metrics for you and your competitors.

Historical Data Charts

What matters most in viewing historical metrics is how you are faring against your competition. For each metric, you can view historical data over time in comparison to your competitors. This way you can distinguish between the effects of your hard work to improve your link metrics and fluctuations that affect the entire index.

You can view historical data via the History tab or by using the menu link next to a given metric on the Summary tab. You can also export all historical data to a CSV file.

You may notice that we have made a few additional improvements to the Link Analysis section, including:

adding Total External Links to Root Domain Metrics (to align with what is reported in Open Site Explorer)

moving Link details to a separate tab for better readability

updating the Summary PDF report to include Subdomain metrics

Linkscape Index Updates

Your link analysis metrics will continue to be updated every time a new index is released. With the rollout of this feature we’ll now be able to store your data from previous indices as well, starting with data from the October 28th index. However, this data only goes back as far as you campaign does. When you create a new campaign, we’ll only begin storing link metrics for you and your competitors from that point forward.

In order to give you the best data, we’re continually improving our Linkscape crawlers and the data they return to the Index. As indices change, it’s possible that your metrics may change as a result of what is included in one index vs. another. This may occur even if a site’s link profile hasn’t changed at all. I encourage you to check out Rand’s Linkscape Index blog posts (released with each new index) to better understand additional factors that could affect your metrics. Best practices indicate that you should always compare your progress against your competitors, versus solely comparing to your past performance.

Let Us Know What You Think

We hope these product updates bring a little cheer to your holiday season. As always, we would love your feedback! Feel free to share your thoughts, or holiday stories, via a comment on this post. For feature ideas you can always share via the feature request forum.

EO service provider BrightEdge Technologies noted on its resourceslast December 20th that Google has started integrating Google+ brand pages to primary search engine results. However, this move was already discovered by Search Engine Land last November. But as of the moment, the recent search engine results integration only occurs to selected brands like AT&T, T-Mobile and Macy’s.

A Google representative offered a statement about the search results: “Content from the +Page, such as recent posts, will appear as annotations attached to its associated web page under the site links in search results if that site is eligible for Direct Connect. It uses the same bi-directional link and algorithmic criteria as Direct Connect.”

The Downside
BrightEdge’s VP for Marketing Brad Mattick also noted that the inclusion of Google+ brand pages in the search results enable marketers to squeeze in some promotional messages. This is deemed by other brands as one way for Google to attract brands to join and be active on its social networking site. As a result, the integration of Google+ Page content to search engine results raised concerns about anti-competitive behavior. Seeing this as an anti-trust move, Herb Kohl of D-Wisc and Mike Lee of R-Utah brought this to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, urging the authority to investigate on the search engine giant’s search business practices.

Meanwhile, the search engine giant defended that the creation of business pages on Google+ will not influence a brand’s page rank. In addition, Google is always improving its algorithm to provide relevant search results; hence, Google+ Page will be ranked on search engine results just like other social media profiles.

The Argument
There are users who argue that the anti-trust issue is out of the question. Pulling a page content and listing a social profile to search engine results are standard behavior. In fact, a brand’s Facebook Page or Twitter account also appears in search engine results. As for Google+’s case, they are still within their rights since it’s their platform, technology and services.
Moreover, showing a brand’s Google+ Page is one way of informing people of the brand’s “official” business page. Still, it won’t outrank results associated with other social media channels.

Regardless whether the search engine giant is curating the search results, its integration with Google+ Page ends the argument why organizations must also have a business page on Google+.

Looking at your site’s aggregate organic search traffic is a bit like docking a boat without a depth sounder: Sure, you can gauge where you need to go, but you’d be wise to have more details before you head in.

On that same tack, we should have more detail about our overall search traffic before we use it to make decisions. First and foremost, this bucket of attention can be divided into two groups that we need to watch differently: branded and non-branded traffic.

Why segment your branded traffic?

By segmenting your branded and non-branded traffic, you get a clear picture of two important indicators of success: how visitors interact with your brand, and how they find you with generic, non-branded keywords. This information can help you can take action to target the keywords you care about. This split is also a useful metric to educate your organization or client about your brand pervasiveness and overall visibility.

That’s why we’re excited to roll out a new feature today: Branded Keywords. Now you can group your brand-related keywords together and see related branded data in-line with your reports.

What branded and non-branded traffic tells you

Keywords related to your brand tend to show up at the end of the conversion funnel, when visitors are already aware and interested. They’re more specific and unique, often based on company and domain names, key products, and variations/misspellings of those names and products. They aren’t subject to the fluctuations caused by search algorithms in the same way that non-branded keywords are. This makes them useful as indicators of long-term strength and popularity. For that reason, most sites should see a decent portion of traffic coming from brand-related keywords.

With new brand rules, you’ll be able to track that branded traffic clearly, and uncover any problems with branded keywords that aren’t ranking as well as they should be.

Things get really interesting when you remove branded numbers from your search traffic numbers and focus on your non-branded traffic. Now you have an clearer picture of the generic keywords that currently work hardest for you, which ones you should be targeting and are not, and which content is most effective.

A quick cruise through the feature

You can add brand rules for existing campaigns under Overview > Manage Brand Rules. Specify brand-related terms, and we’ll filter all keywords that contain those words.

You can also add brand rules for new campaigns during setup. Once campaign setup is complete, your rules will be applied to any additional keywords you add.

Add or remove individual keywords once rules are set up. At any time, you can label individual keywords as branded or exclude one from the “branded” filter under Overview > Manage Keywords.

If your campaign is hooked to Google Analytics, you’ll see your historical traffic data split into branded and non-branded metrics.

You can get better insight into how people arrive at your site with in-depth metrics on top ten search sources, landing pages, and nonpaid keywords, including PPV, bounce rate, time on site, and more.

See traffic data for brand-related campaign keywords when you filter branded keywords in your ranking report.

More options for managing your keywords include improved list filters, the ability to view all keywords in the list, and a new label filter for adding keywords.

And there’s more coming in the new year! You’ll see .PDF and .CSV reports added for traffic data. We’ll also start showing you your top keywords that send you traffic, so you can have the option to start tracking them.